That request is part of the nonprofit’s larger goal: to construct a wildlife and conservation preserve of more than 3 million contiguous acres in Montana—complete with bison native to the Great Plains.

The nonprofit owns the land it’s asking to graze, but opponents of the request say that “free-roaming” bison could damage neighboring private property and contaminate cattle herds with brucellosis, a disease that can lead to high rates of failed pregnancies among livestock.

The resolution is a way to “ensure that we as a body support our agricultural community,” Rep. Dan Bartel, a Republican from Lewistown who introduced the bill, told the Billings Gazette.

The nonprofit’s vice president Pete Geddes responded to those claims in an op-ed in the Billings Gazette, saying the resolution was instead a “thinly veiled attempt” by a property rights organization to use the “coercive power of the state to attack the property rights of APR.”

“HJ28 is misguided, mean-spirited, and factually inaccurate,” Geddes wrote. “It should be stopped.”

Former Gov. Brian Schweitzer agreed, saying in his own op-ed that the resolution lacked scientific basis and is a prime example of “big government and socialism.”

“This socialist philosophy of picking winners (cattle) and losers (bison) is silly. What happened to freedom? What next?” he wrote. “Ban Charlois and Limousine breeds because they have French names? Ban Corrientes cattle because they are Mexican? Only allow whitefaced sheep? Only allow Border Collie cow dogs (my favorite)?”

The resolution passed the House of Representatives 59-40 and moves next to the Senate.

Kate Elizabeth Queram is a Staff Correspondent for Route Fifty and is based in Washington, D.C.